Sabiaceae

Trees, scandent shrubs or woody climbers. Leaves alternate or spirally arranged, penninerved, simple or imparipinnate, the leaflets in the latter case opposite on often somewhat swollen nodes of the rachis; exstipulate. Flowers small, bisexual, rarely polygamo-dioecious, in terminal or axillary racemose panicles, or cymose: paniculately arranged cymes, or these reduced to solitary axillary flowers. Sepals (3—)5, imbricate, free or ± connate at the base, equal or unequal. Petals (4—)5, mostly opposite the sepals (rarely alternate: Ophiocaryon spp., South America). Stamens (including staminodes) 5, opposite the petals, all polliniferous (Sabia) or only 2 inner ones opposite the reduced petals polliniferous and the other 3 staminodial. Disk small, annular, surrounding the base of the ovary. Ovary of 2(—3) carpels united to form a compound superior ovary, carpels very rarely free in the apical part, in that case tapering to 3 short styles with a capitate stigma; otherwise normally a short, cylindric or conical style; cells 2(—3), each with 1 or 2 pendulous or horizontal, axile hemitropous, unitegmic, crassinucellar ovules. Fruit either 1-celled or 2-coccous, drupaceous or dry, indehiscent; endocarp often wrinkled. Endosperm scanty or wanting. Embryo with a curved radicle and 2 folded or coiled cotyledons. Distribution. Three genera: Sabia Indo-Malesian, from the S. Deccan and Kashmir to S. Japan, throughout Malesia as far as the Solomons; Meliosma with a similar range but also occurring in tropical America; Ophiocaryon in the Neotropics. The family is absent in Australia and Africa.